How Social media sites help patients make healthcare decisions | Study

29Mar

image via pharmamkting.blogspot.com

This came out from National Research Corp.’s Ticker survey, which bills itself as the largest, most up-to-date poll on consumer healthcare opinions and behaviors. The survey corroborates other surveys ( Pew Internet) which similarly find how internet sources like social media influence patient behaviour, especially in chronic diseases.

The survey found that 94 percent of respondents have used Facebook to gather information on their healthcare, 32 percent used YouTube, 18 percent used Twitter and MySpace and 2 percent used FourSquare, a location-based website.

Key findings of the NRC survey:

When asked about social media’s influence, one in four respondents said it was “very likely” or “likely” to impact their future healthcare decisions.

When asked for their level of trust in social media, 32 percent said “very high” or “high,” and only 7.5 percent said “very low.”

Respondents still backed hospital websites are the premiere source of online healthcare information with one in two preferring heath provider websites to any source. Fourteen percent preferred an integrated approach of hospital websites and social media combined. Three percent preferred only social media.